Perspectives from an English Historian who just happens to be Gay, Catholic, and a Democratic Socialist. Now back in the UK after 20 years of living in the United States. The Blog is eclectic in covering all these sides of my Life. Follow on Twitter at PaulBHalsall

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Jo Jo Laine, who died on Sunday aged 53 after falling down a flight of stairs, led a fast-paced life which bore witness to the dangers of too much beauty combined with an almost total lack of self-restraint.

Petite, wide-eyed and with waist-length dark auburn hair, Jo Jo Laine became famous as a model but notorious as a groupie who numbered among her conquests some of the most glamorous icons of the Sixties and Seventies rock scene.

I don't really have any sympathy for them as Republicans, but I do have a great deal of sympathy for them as men enlosed and psychologically damaged by the closet. The Haggard case my be worse, since his wife and kids are now indubitably hurt.

Everybody's life runs by a different clock: when it's good time for one person to come out, its not necessarily right to another. Those of us who do come out do face a more or less limited form of public discrimination: on the other hand there is the basic freedom of being oneself. This "everyone is on their own clock" is the basic arguement against "outing."

The problem is when the hypocrisy becomes transparently foul. When people have accepted themselves as homosexual but continue to publically attack gay people, visit public gay places, and then expect the rest of us to conspire in their closet.